


Nameless

by Roca



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Cancer, Gen, Infant Death, Is a lot about some bad stuff that created artifacts, Self Harm, Suicide, so warnings for:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3162860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in stolen moments between inventory and missions, she combs the shelves for the little things — the everyday objects that have been tossed about in the tumult of people’s lives until they emerge, smooth and shining with power, like strange sea stones washed up on the shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nameless

**Author's Note:**

> I just love love love worldbuilding, and I think that the show could really have gone into more detail when considering the creation of artifacts and the implications that there could be some just lying around. Of course, I spent way too much time thinking about it, and this story was the result.

When Myka finally accepts the existence of artifacts, she has an immediate desire to know more, to understand them. There aren’t many books on the subject, as only a select few throughout history have ever been let in on the secret  — and those who were in the know tended to be too busy tracking them down to bother writing novels about them (with a certain H.G. Wells being a notable exception).

She has to go to Artie and Leena with her questions, endlessly pestering them during her first weeks on the job. Though Leena is unfailingly patient, Artie quickly tires of her constant queries.

“Just think of it like this,” he grinds out at her one day after half an hour of trying to explain the properties of Emily Dickinson’s ink blotter. “The force of the person is placed into the artifact. A piece of them  — figuratively speaking, most of the time  — becomes a part of its… energy. It’s being. However you want to put it.”

“The force of a person,” she repeats slowly. “Artie, what does that  _ mean _ ?”

“Their emotions. Their talents. Their essence. Their fate. They’re imprinted onto the artifact. Sometimes a certain event is the trigger; sometimes it builds up over time.”

“But Artie, that doesn’t make sense.” The look he gives her lends new meaning to the word loathing, so she hastily clarifies: “If that were true, then, well, everything would be an artifact. I mean, every time you had a bad day, you’d accidentally turn the pen in your pocket into one.”

“That’s not necessarily so,” Artie says. “It takes a lot of energy to create an artifact in one burst. An event of great magnitude, or one in which dozens or hundreds or thousands of souls experienced similar emotions at the same time  — that would do it. Of course, there are exceptions. There have been individuals throughout history with particularly forceful personalities that have an easier time projecting themselves into artifacts.” He sighs and relaxes into his chair, happy to have settled the matter, but Myka isn’t finished.

“But what you said before,” she persists, “about it building up over time. That could still happen to anyone, right?”

Now Artie grows quiet for a moment. “It does happen, sometimes. Lots of average, unremarkable people create artifacts without even knowing it. They’re minor ones, usually, but they have power.”

“And they’re just… out there?”

“There isn’t much we can do about them,” he admits. “They’re tiny, in the grand scheme of things, and they can’t usually do much harm. We just don’t have time to track them down.”

And, even though she is crawling with new questions, Myka has learned enough about Artie to know when he has reached his limits. So she lets it go.

But, in stolen moments between inventory and missions, she combs the shelves for the little things  — the everyday objects that have been tossed about in the tumult of people’s lives until they emerge, smooth and shining with power, like strange sea stones washed up on the shore.

She finds them.

Many of the artifacts that they work with have famous names attached to them  — authors and scientists and killers and kings. But some, even of the most powerful ones, do not. The anguish of a crew of sailors, sunken in an anonymous grave at the bottom of the sea, is preserved in a single tattered piece of rigging. The long-awaited joy of an unknown slave is etched into the golden coin with which he bought his freedom.

And then there are the ones that, as Artie said, are relatively impotent. She discovers a beat-up pair of running shoes that, upon further investigation, turn out to have been worn by an overweight man while crossing the finish line of his first marathon. There was nothing special about the man, nothing extraordinary. But he created an artifact, minor though it may be: his shoes inspire a sense determination in their wearer, even in the face of seemingly-impossible odds. There are others like it. Myka uncovers a spoon from a soup kitchen that is imbued with the volunteers’ compassion, a well-worn shawl that almost quivers with warmth and love, a fountain pen that writes exclusively in ink of joyous yellow.

Somehow, however, it seems that fear and pain have an easier time imprinting themselves into objects. She finds a kitchen knife that some unnamed woman apparently used to kill her spouse. Even from feet away, Myka can feel that it sings of vengeance and death. Beside it lies a leather whip that reeks of agony  — the grim other side of the coin she found before.

Worse than these are the ones that there are many of. Perhaps it is simply the idea that such grief has been shared by such a large number of people, or perhaps it is the hundreds of different shades of sorrow that radiate from them, but Myka cannot stand to be surrounded by these artifacts for long. There are letters  — thousands of them  — page upon page of handwriting that varies between trembling print and delicate cursive. Suicide notes. Written confessions. Words of fury, words of blame, words of regret, words that should never be spoken aloud. In another section of the Warehouse, she finds an aisle full of stocking caps. They vary wildly in quality, from hand-knitted and hand-sewn to the cheap kind given away at hospitals. She quickly averts her eyes, only to catch sight of another row beneath, this one of hats barely the size of her fist. And then there is the rack of sharp things, so deep within the Warehouse it feels as if the building itself is trying to hide them. It holds steak knives and razor blades and even scissors, for these are the tools that so many nameless people used to slash out their sorrow onto their wrists.

And as she thinks about coping, and the ways that people can fall apart even as they try to stitch themselves back together, Myka remembers something. As a child, after her father raged and shouted over some small misstep she made, she would read the same book over the words almost didn’t make sense anymore. She considers that book, and she wonders.

She doesn’t have a chance to test out her hypothesis until the entire affair with Edgar Allen Poe’s journal comes about and drags her back home. In a moment of stillness, while her father rests downstairs, Myka tiptoes up to her room to retrieve the book. Despite how well she has always taken care of her possessions, it is shabby from age and constant use throughout her childhood, its binding cracked and the title faded. Picking it up, she feels comfort flood through her in a warm wave. She turns the pages reverently. The Skin Horse is as wise as she remembers, and reading his words gives her an incredible feeling of peace. She considers calling Pete in to see if it has the same effect on him, but decides against it when she realizes how strange the request would seem.

Instead, she slips one of the metallic bags from her pocket and watches the gentle spray of sparks as she drops the book inside.

The experience makes artifacts more real to her. She understands now exactly what it means that each one is an extension of a person. Even the most deadly artifact comes from some kind of human passion  — it lashes out because the person who created it was angry or hurt or helpless. She can see why Leena makes note of the artifacts’ contrasting energies and why they must be placed carefully in order to avoid upsetting each other. Those forged from hatred are very different than those made of misery, and nothing makes the enraged even angrier like being close to something that reflects happiness.

It makes her more effective in the field, she thinks, since it allows her to better comprehend the ins and outs of the objects she must track down and neutralize. But more than that, it makes her feel even more amazed at the world she lives in. Joining the Warehouse gave her insight to a realm of possibility she could never have imagined, but learning the minutia of its existence has been even more revealing. There are dimensions to the human experience that cannot be described in words, only felt through the impressions they leave on the objects around them.

Here in the Warehouse, surrounded by fragments of other people’s deepest essence, she feels as if she has learned a strange, exhilarating lesson whose moral she cannot quite put her finger on. And despite her general insistence on understanding _exactly_ , comprehending _entirely_ , knowing _precisely_ — she is content to merely wonder.

 


End file.
